1.
“So there's something I keep waiting to say to you,” she says, surprising herself.
“Oh boy.” Caleb laughs.“Wiiine!”
He swigs back the bottle. The stove light makes a gibbous moon of his shaved head.
“Come outside,” She grabs his hand–not a thing she has done before outside a rehearsal exercise– and walks him past the pounding crowd in the living room, toward the door. She did not expect to do this tonight.
The street is quiet around them.
“Wow, now I am nervous,” Caleb says.
“No, you shouldn’t be nervous,” she says, “I should be nervous.”
“Ok.” His face doesn’t perk up.
“Should I like sit down or?” he asks, turning to the wide nature strip.
“No.” She walks, jerking her head for him to follow.
“Are we going somewhere?”
She shakes her head. He trots to catch up.
She stops about a block away. breathes the cool deep air. She can smell plants and dirt. The sky is darker and the stars are lighter out here, closer to what she’s used to.
She looks into his eyes. Her insides rev.
The first time they had a conversation in a rehearsal break, he explained how he was trying to get the director to overhaul it into a one person show with him as the star. She avoided talking to him for about a week, until Ramelle explained that he just deadpanned annoyingly well and often. Lus doesn’t even go to their uni, she’d just happened to know Ramelle from a short course they both did a couple of years ago. Now the show’s done and she’s here on this Ferntree Gully street, looking at those eyes.
She grasps a breath.
“I…”
The first step onto the tightrope. Maybe she could pause in this moment, his kind expectant eyes on her. All this power beating in her chest.
“...want to tell you that…”
She could draw this sentence out and out, adding more and more clauses before getting to the main verb. Linger, set up camp together in this undefined space.
“...I am…”
The verb, no going back. Stepping off the plank.
“...physically attracted to you.”
When this particular choice of words came into her head, two weeks ago, she nodded to herself. Not love. A friend, and to kiss his shoulder blades. Nothing in between. …Probably. Sex? She doesn’t know, but she knows she wants to find out how soft his stomach is.
Caleb’s head tilts back a little. Then he sets his neck and jaw steady. He waves a hand back and forward along his cheek, as though trying to outsource his thinking to his fingers.
“Ok. Thanks. Yeah. I think you’re physically attractive too.”
“Oh. Thanks.” She laughs. It’s quiet enough to hear the tiny drips, here and there, onto leaves and concrete. The footpath is still damp from the rain.
Caleb is watching her. Is he waiting for something else?
“Um. Yeah,” she says.
“Is… what was your goal in telling me that?”
“Um, for you to know?”
He’s rubbing the heel of one foot against the other. “Like did you want… something to happen now?”
“Oh!” She laughs delightedly. “Like if we kissed, I would not be not into that.”
“Oh yeah right yeah.” He’s smoothing out his tailcoat with the backs of his hands. He lifts them to the back of his neck and runs his knuckles up into the beginning of his hair. His nervousness too kind of delights her.
“Yeah I’m… pretty tired and probably going to go home soon so I probably don’t want to kiss tonight.” He’s staring at her jaw.
“Oh yeah.” The jelly inside her ribcage sets, condenses and contracts.
“Yeah thanks for telling me though.” He smiles.
She nods. Her thoughts float up one quarter inch from where her physical form is. Her mind just out of synch with her brain.
“OK,” he says, “I’m going to go back inside and get a drink.”
His wine bottle is in his hand.
“Ok,” she says.
He turns.
Her internal organs have tied a knot just under her diaphragm. Stand in neutral. Place your hands over your solar plexus. Breath with your diaphragm. Her neck beneath her earlobes burns.
He stops. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah I’ll… Yeah.”
Her body follows him inside, leaving her out alone on the wet pavement.
2.
Five weeks later, she dumps her one carryon and two garbage bags by Caleb’s marble counter.
“Um, do you want a drink?” he says.
“Oh sure, what’s on offer,” she laughs.
He opens the fridge. Would it be weird to offer alcohol?
He pours them San Pellegrino and they sit at the kitchen table. He literally can’t think of anything to say. How is that possible? He takes out his phone. Embarrasses himself by the obviousness of that awkwardness, puts it away.
Last week, he had just wandered out of a bizarrely disjointed Torts lecture when he saw her Insta story. Needing somewhere to crash before she could move into her new place. His parents had left that same morning.
He flattens his feet on the floor. Pours more water. Looks up. “Well. How have you been?”
She smiles. His ankles relax.
After dinner, scraping the takeaway off her plate, he says, “So we’ve got the guest room but the mattress in there is pretty shitty to be honest. You’re also welcome to just share my bed if you want, it's up to you.” He’s not totally sure what makes him say that.
On his bed, she presses one of his shredded-foam pillows between her hands, watching it mold.
“Need anything? Water…”
She rolls to the other side of the bed, reaches out of sight three feet down to the floor, and rolls back with a chunky water bottle, raising it to the ceiling.
“Sorry for underestimating you,” he says.
He kneels up onto the bed and stretches out into the already warm sheets, accidentally brushing her head with his hand.
“Yes guv’nor”,” Lus says, nodding comically.
“What?”
“Oh I don’t know it just seemed like some kind of… patting my head.”
“Yes my page – do guv’nors have pages? – I’m so glad we sleep together despite the awkward power dynamics.”
Lus lowers her voice, “Yes guv’nor, thank you guv’nor.”.”
His head touches his pillow and a yawn overtakes him. “Wow, I just realised I’m tired.”
“You’ve been doing so much!”
“Yeah. I never give myself time to get tired.” He laughs. “I might read for a bit.”
“Sure.” She reaches for her phone.
He scans the books by his bed but doesn’t take them in.
“No sorry, maybe I won’t read maybe we’ll just talk?”
“Yeah.”
He snuggles down until their eyes are level. He almost falls in her eyes, he has to catch himself.
Five weeks ago when she dragged him out of Evie’s house into the quiet street, he’d watched her psych herself up like she was going to reveal some personal secret. Something to add a new layer of solidity to their growing intimacy. When instead she said she was attracted to his body, his stomach rolled. Like discovering your friends are only hanging out with you because your mum’s been paying them. All the colours in the air between them, the ones that buzzed up whenever they stepped into the same room, they all fell to the ground. In the weeks since, he’d scrabbled to pick them back up, but they’d kept curling like cellophane.
“It’s really nice having you here,” he says, as she places her phone back on her bedside table.
“Good I’m glad I’m here.”
“I already feel so different to when you arrived, I was like..”
“Yeah.” She laughs.
There’s a pause.
“I might turn off the light?”
“Yeah sure.”
Click.
He hears Lus breathe in, then out. The slightest of breezes touches his cheek.
“Do you want to spoon?” he says.
“Sure!”
He slides his shoulders toward her and she turns away from him. He shuffles the rest of his body in. He drapes an arm over her waist, his hand curled awkwardly by her stomach. His breath eddies back to him off the back of her neck. Their bodies weigh into the mattress, like a ball in the centre of a trampoline. Each breathing in and out. Caleb brings his breath into sync with hers. His left arm’s gonna cramp, bent up against his stomach with his hand between his scars. He straightens his right hand out from the awkward hand curl and rubs it back and forth over her solar plexus, through the fabric of her top. He brings his cramping left arm down.
“Do you wanna…” He raises his hip demonstratively.
“Hm? Oh.”
She raises her hips and he slides his forearms under her waist. Comes to rest just under her right breast.
Her materiality. Her flesh and weight. The smell of her hair. He bends and straightens his fingers under her breast. His fingertips rubs her ribs. Bend and straighten. She fills the space in front of him, her whole body within his arms.
He gives the back of her head a little kiss.
He waits. She doesn’t move. He blinks in the dark. A tram clanks by in the distance.
She places a hand on his leg.
He kisses her hair again, closer to her ear. His heart starts to beat a little faster. She puts a hand on his knee.
He turns his right hand, bringing his thumb from the base of her sternum up along the inside of her breast, then back down again. She keeps rubbing his leg.
He brings his hand down to her waist and pushes up the hem of her t-shirt, slipping his hand underneath and covering his other hand. He can’t move that other arm much, because her ribs are pinning it. He rubs little circles on her ribs. Warmth from her skin fills his hands, held in by her t-shirt. He hugs her tight to him, squishing them together like cheeks squished between hands. She hugs his hugging arms towards her. Silly, tight hug.
He slips his hand back under her t-shirt and his hand licks her stomach, up to a breast, gently rounds it. “Is this ok?” he says.
She doesn’t reply. But then she turns over and kisses him.
The softness inside her top lip. Something’s melting. He dips in. She grasps his head, kisses his cheekbone, forehead,eyelid. He giggles with his breath. She kisses the skin behind his ear. His breath flattens to a gasp.
“My page,” she says.
He laughs. More silly banter back and forth, and his hand is on her waist. “Can I take off your top?”
She smiles and pushes herself up on one arm. She helps him pull it over her head and he throws it off the side of the bed. it falls one, two, three feet to the floor.
Now her breasts, no distractions.. He roams his hands around her front, her back. He shuffles down for his mouth..
She lies there breathing.
He licks and and flips and grazes. Fun, to roam such friendly flesh.
A lot of movement waits between his legs, he gives in to it and his hand goes down to the waistband of her pyjama pants. Leaning, half to the side of her and half over her, where she lies on her back. He looks into her eyes. She smiles at him.
“Yeah?” he whispers.
She grasps his arm. “Maybe just, not for the moment.”
“Oh sure. Sorry.”
“No no no, just, not for the moment. This is nice though.”
She pulls his head down to her and kisses him. Heat, saliva, faint bone under skin, swirl through the minutes. She slides her hand under the waistband of his underwear, onto his ass.
“Mmm.” He rocks onto her.
She holds him towards her as he continues.
He pushes down his underwear, losing them in the covers by his feet. She pushes off his t-shirt. Runs a hand from his collarbone across his chest and down to squeeze his stomach.
“It’s really lovely being naked with you,” he says, snuggling up to her.
She pulls him close. As they kiss more the air between them buzzes. The colours rise up. Lust rumbles like an engine.
Her hand’s on his hip. She moves it round towards the front.
“Yeah,” he says.
She moves it into the fluff. Her middle finger, rude finger, seeks and finds his dick. His chest vibrates with an exhalation. She strokes her fingertip along the side of his dick, just touching. Flashes of silver. He cups her ass.
She dips her fingers further down, into his wetness, and slides them up, between the lips, to lubricate everything. His junk seems to be vibrating supersonically. Everything about her body suddenly seems fun. Her lank of pink hair seems fun to tousle, her shoulder seems fun to squeeze, and her fingers feel the funnest of all. He can have a really fun time with a friend in his bed. So funny that he worried so much at her words back there on the pavement, at her eyes, at her thoughts coming to touch him.
3.
Why the fuck did Ramelle have her even come today. She’s spent the last 15 minutes sitting here watching the cast argue about a single transition. And Ramelle, the director, is just letting it play. How exactly will this help Lus make their costumes? She could be in bed watching Dropout right now.
Jack, who always seems on the verge of either a dance break or a nervous breakdown, is somersaulting across the stage while carrying a Eucalyptus branch. Well, he keeps collapsing then rolling over. Another actor, Sian, gives Lus a pained smile. Caleb and one of the other actors carry a bench from one side of the stage to the other for the twelfth time.
Someone says, “No, Jack should come on before the bench, that’s what I mean.”
Director Ramelle cocks her head watching, very thoughtful.
At least Lus isn’t just spending this rehearsal mentally running through everything she’s doing wrong, like she used to when she still acted, like in that first show when she’d met them all. If she’s honest, she’s surprising herself with the inventiveness and quality of her costumes. She only dabbled in sewing before this. Ramelle and the producer have given her a lot of creative leeway. But sometimes they take days to reply to her messages, and the focus of the show seems to shift from week to week. Now it’s a devised piece about social media and the forests of the Otways. Whenever she comes to rehearsal she leaves with her shoulders in knots.
Caleb and the other actor put down the bench.
After that original conversation outside the afterparty, when she’d told him how she felt, and he’d… said what he had said, she had moped for months. They’d seen each other a couple of times, but he’d never brought up the conversation. Then, there in his bed, he was kissing the back of her neck. Almost exactly a feeling she had pictured. But the release she’d expected didn’t come. In fact she froze. Something had caught her in its headlights.Seconds passed. She was probably weirding him out. She placed her hand on his knee. She rubbed it back and forth. He asked her if it was ok, what was happening. Thoughtful boy. But if she said No, she’d have to explain it. And there was no reason, she couldn’t explain. If she said Yes, she’d have to continue down the plank. Her thoughts dissolved into mist. She couldn’t move. The clean white wall.
Maybe if she just dove in her feelings would catch up. She kissed him.
He responded, lips wide and slobbery. Her lips were going to disappear into his. Somehow she’d been sucked out of herself and replaced with a set of instructions. They directed her lips, moved her hands, controlled her breath. She let them. She had literally fantasized about this. She stroked his neck.
Maybe she just needed a little break. She grasped his head and pulled out of his lips. But that could spark questions, so she pecked his cheek and eyelid. She found more places to peck, took the chance to breathe. But she couldn’t do that forever. She cocked a silly smile. “My page,” she said, and he laughed.
Sian strokes the eucalyptus leaves. Caleb enunciates clearly and roundly, Sarah Storer liked your status. Robert MckInley posted in the group ‘Faces in Things’.
Forming each syllable with his lips.
Director Ramelle hasn’t even looked at Lus, right next to her, in ten minutes. Lus bends down and puts her sketchbook back in her bag. Ramelle doesn’t notice or react. Lus lies back flat on the bench they’re both sitting on.
Ramelle glances at her. “Are you ok?”
Metal beams cross the ceiling. The wood behind them shines surprisingly bright.
Ramelle thrusts her arm out at the actors, “Sian! Yes, the ecosystem thing here that’s great!”
Sian gives a thumbs up.
Ramelle touches Lus’ shoulder. “Lus?”
Lus sits up. “What?”
The actors who were saying lines all stop saying lines.
“Um, I was just seeing if you’re ok,” Ramelle says, not moving.
The actors are all looking at her but some of them are going on being marsupials at the same time.
“Yeah I’m ok. Just sitting here just watching you all fuck around walking back and forth saying lines off Facebook and not making any decisions and that’s totally the best use of my time as the costume designer, yeah I’m great.”
She feels regret and satisfaction at the same time.
“Ok, Lus,” Ramelle’s voice becomes very rational, “let’s talk about this. I’m sorry you’re feeling frustrated.
“No, I’m not frustrated, just done.”
She picks up her bag and walks out of the room.
She needs to hold the tears in til she can get to the right place, like holding it in when you’re busting for the toilet. She walks through the foyer past dancers chatting and trots down the stairs. Caleb’s arms always bounce around a little, when he raises them in the air. Her chest starts to tremble. When she comes out into the sunlight the tram is squeaking to a halt. She runs up the steps and to the orange seat in the back corner. This place will have to do. But no tears come out. The tram rumbles along its tracks. Her chest holds tight like a tightrope. Walking across the tightrope, a man. Step step step. Each step pulls the hooks attached to the tightrope at each end, the hooks screwed into her flesh. She should talk to him. But what would she say? She doesn’t even have something to say in her own head. She pulls out her phone. She flicks her thumb up the screen, flick. A drummer she went to school with embraces his fiance. Flick. Her friend is hosting a trans poetry slam next week. Flick. Her dad holding a new beetroot he grew. She punches the seat. Her lips screw up. Her eyes fill up.
4.
Three months later.
Caleb reads the tiny high-quality paper menu for the third time. He can feel the sunlight even inside, today. He reaches under the table, pulls out one of his law books, then slides it back in his bag.
Eventually he’d had to admit that she was avoiding him. He limited himself to messaging her every two weeks. Messages almost all without replies. He made himself stop sending them. When she’d slide onto his screen in his Instagram feed, his chest got acidic. Back when she had first stopped coming to rehearsals, he had wanted to ask if she was OK, but for some reason the idea of asking her that felt like a violation, dangerous.
He taps his phone. 2.08.
He was eating a ginger snap at home a couple weeks ago, in one of his 5 minute breaks from reading, when his phone dinged. She just asked if he wanted to have coffee. Do you want to get coffee next week? That was all.
Driving here he had to exert enormous effort to move his hand from the steering wheel to the volume knob without it shaking.
The bell on the door tinkles and he looks up to see her coming in. New hair bobs around her ears. He waves and smiles.
She raises her eyebrows as she pulls her chair out. “How are you going?”
“Yeah good. You?”
“Yeah y’know. Good.”
“Nice hair,” he says.
She flicks it back and forth like an ad. “So, fancy internship I hear!”
He grins sheepishly.
They catch each other up, and with each new bit of shared information his nerves fade. They fade until he’s breathing normally. Then they keep fading. With all the emotions he’d feared or hoped to feel, they’re somehow all absent. Her face moves, but whatever part inside him used to respond seems to have been repurposed to something else. There is a slight dull ache in his stomach, but nothing’s being stirred up at all. He makes a joke about cars. She laughs. He sees with utter certainty that he won’t message her again, and by her unbroken politeness he can see that she won’t either. Perhaps they really both came only to confirm what they already somehow knew, like responsible doctors double-checking vitals after a flatline. When he heads out to his car he turns back for a moment, and sees the side of her face, looking at something he can’t see.
Thanks to Cedar, Georgia, and Em for feedback.
I wrote the first drafts of this back in 2019. Did some intermittent fiddling and I think submitted to journals a few times in the years since then, but never was totally happy with it. The thing that made me decide to just put it up here now was seeing Castration Movie on the weekend and coming out of that just feeling a desire to like make shit, especially trans shit, and put it out. The story might not obviously be “trans shit” (beyond just having at least one trans person in it), and I didn’t see it as trans shit when I first wrote it (which was pre transition), but looking at it now it seems to me very much trans shit.
If you read this whole thing, let me know (reply to this email or leave a comment)! On average I get around 1 response per post so it always makes a difference to hear from people 😊